Soul Searching
by Jendosan
Summary: Takes place after House is shot. A little peek into Cameron's mind. Oneshot. Complete, I think.


Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters.

Most people didn't see him as loveable. In fact, he was barely _approachable_, and that was on one of his _good_ days. What exactly DID she see in him?

He was damaged. God help her it was true, she was drawn to damaged men. He had told her that at dinner and she shrugged it off, she didn't want him to know how squarely he had struck the blow. He had hurt her- well that wasn't entirely true. She had been hurt early on, he just reopened the wound. That was another thing: he could read people as easily as you are reading this now. Details that others, herself included, would overlook completely he would see. He looked for the details, let the ordinary stuff blow away like too much head on a beer.

The damage part was the obvious thing, but not the only thing. She felt safe practicing medicine with him there. Completely and utterly safe. She knew that as long as she gave him all the information she had available he would not allow her to make a mistake that might kill a patient. Not that she didn't trust the other members of the team, but the thought of just the three of them doing what he did was frightening, and a little unnerving, and impossible.

He lay on the bed, covered with a crisp white sheet, the bandage at his throat the only visible sign of the injuries the bullets had inflicted. IV tubing snaked out from underneath the sheet at his sides, oxygen tubing to the cannula around his head.

At least he was breathing on his own. It would be less traumatic for him when he came out of the coma, if he could speak. Less traumatic for whom? She shook her head, set down the book and walked over, lifted the sheet back and took his wrist. Reassured by the steady throbbing beneath her fingers she replaced his hand, and the sheet, and sat back down.

She let the book lie. She had read the same paragraph about a million times and for the life of her she couldn't remember a single word. Soul searching was what she had been doing, where had she left off?

Oh yes, how could she possibly find anything in him to love? That was the question she had started with. Damaged. Physically and emotionally. The emotional damage ran the deepest, she knew. The leg was just an unfortunate consequence, the outward sign, his scarlet "B". Stacy had betrayed him, played him for the fool. He had trusted her with his life and she had betrayed that trust by waiting until he was comatose before ordering the surgery. He had never forgiven her, probably never would. He had loved her then, and loved her still. But "forgive and forget" he could not do. Every vicodin was a small white reminder of betrayal at the highest level. When she cheated on Mark with him it sealed the deal. If she could do it twice, love 'em, cripple 'em and leave 'em, and show no remorse, she had to go. Period. And he had done it, had shoved her out the door without so much as a "have a nice day". His heart, twice wounded by this woman, still knew right from wrong.

Good point, she thought. Right from wrong. He knew it like everyone else knows it, but he was committed to it with a passion she had never seen before. He would break the law, ignore ethics, get himself thrown in jail if he had to, but he would do the right thing unerringly. She had seen him manipulate people into doing the right thing without them even being aware he was doing it. Sometimes he wasn't even in the building when his marionette show was playing out; the perfect alibi. She had tried it, unsuccessfully- her performance was so obvious it was funny to those watching.

Watching. That he did sometimes to extremes. She had seen him stand outside patient rooms, just watching, for hours. That's what it looked like, but more often he was likely thinking, looking for some small inconsistency that had been overlooked.

Thinking. That's what he did better than anyone else she had ever encountered. The man was brilliant. Savant brilliant. She knew his IQ was way above genius, and would only have been a little surprised if it had set a new high. He thought better while his hands were occupied, be it yo-yo or tennis ball or piano. Sometimes she would catch him just wiggling his fingers when no other distraction was available. The Nintendo game was a godsend.

For that matter, so was Chase. She felt bad for Chase, almost pitied him at times. Everyone took advantage of him, and she was no exception. Yet he bore the blows with an iron will, a defiant act of courage that no one really expected or could explain. Some days she felt like crying under the pressure, and it was Chase who would offer comfort. Chase, the whipping boy. Chase, the rock. In fact Chase was the first one to him after the gunman had been subdued. After all the abuse, Chase was there first.

Why am I thinking about Chase? This started off about me... she stopped as the door slid open and a nurse entered. She checked and charted his vitals, urine output, O2 sats. She nodded as she silently closed the door behind her.

He looked small in the bed. He had been unconscious for two days, intentionally as the ketamine rewired his brain. They had argued about it, briefly, she and Cuddy. Cuddy had not wanted to give him the animal tranquilizer. But she had fought for it, told her that he had requested it himself, that he had known what he was doing and would accept the consequences. It was only when she began to point back to the infarction that Cuddy had caved.

Lisa had known him longer than anyone else here. There was talk of some past encounter, either in med school or college, the story changed depending on who was telling it. He never admitted to it, only alluded to it now and then when it suited his needs. Cuddy certainly never brought it up and on one occasion flatly denied it. Still the rumors persisted, and she knew that most rumors did in fact have their base in truth. She knew he did find Lisa sexually attractive, when she was around he could often be found gazing at her barely revealed cleavage. He never looked at her that way... no, wait. She had made him speechless, the night of the benefit when he had turned around and caught sight of her in her red dress, the one she had picked out hoping it would have that very effect on him. But that night hadn't gone as she'd hoped, thanks to a seventy-something woman who had been dead for years. They had saved the child, though...

The thought streaked its way across her mind. A child, really. He was a grown-up child. He pouted and whined, shouted when he didn't get his way. He played with toys, be it Magic 8-ball, high performance motorcycle, or MRI machine. Capricious. She looked at him in bed and she felt the maternal stirring within her. She longed to mother him, to hold him and rock him and tell him it was going to be all right, he was safe now. She wanted to feel his arms around her, holding onto her with the hope that she really could protect him from further harm.

Her mind drifted back to the events in the office, and the one searing image was his face as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened to him. It wasn't fear, or shock, or even confusion. It was the look of someone who had just woken up in a strange bed with no clothes on, the look you give when you realize you are completely vulnerable and there's nothing you can do to change it. Then he had been shot the second time, and that's when things got a little blurry. Security guards, another shot, then nurses and orderlies rushing in and orders being shouted so rapidly that she blanked everything out. Her only concern was get to him, stop the blood pouring from his neck wound. She dammed the blood with her hand over the wound until they reached the ER, where the trauma doctors there took over. She backed away, found Cuddy in her face. That's when she had told her about the drug request, and they had argued, briefly. He had told her he wanted the ketamine, and she found a strength in herself that she hadn't known existed. Not that Cuddy had put up much of a fight: the shock of him being gunned down in her hospital had made her vulnerable.

It wasn't until after he was out of surgery that she started to lose it. In the bathroom, washing his blood from her hands and seeing the red-brown swirling down the drain is what did it. She ran to a stall and was violently ill, even though she knew he was going to be all right. At least physically. The thought that made her ill was the thought that maybe, if the ketamine hadn't affected him the way it was supposed to, the things that made him _him_ would be different. Or worse: that he'd lose that incisive intellect, that it would be lost to mankind forever.

That's where she was when Wilson found her. Sitting on the floor in the locker room, crying and shaking uncontrollably. He had sat next to her and held her, told her over and over that it would be all right, asked to drive her home. But she had refused to leave, she needed to be here with him when he woke up. She needed to look into those amazingly deep blue eyes and see for herself that he was okay. Still there, still himself. If he could bring himself to insult her so much the better. At least she'd know.

Wilson. His Sancho Panza, his Tonto, his sounding board. Maybe even his conscience. The one person who kept him the least little bit grounded. If she was attracted to damaged men, why wasn't she attracted to Wilson? He was closer to her age, he dressed better, took better care of himself, and he was damaged too. He had been married how many times? Three? It couldn't have been the women in his life, no one picks three losers in a row. The odds of that happening were just too astronomical. There had to be something else going on there, some early childhood damage at least. He was polite, gentle, he actually cared about his patients. Yet for some reason she wasn't attracted to him the way she was attracted to House. To Greg.

She had never called him by that name. Greg. No one did. Not even Wilson. Why was that? Distance. He kept everyone at cane's length. Except Stacy. She called him Greg, but they had been intimate. To everyone else he was just plain House.

A soft rustling from the bed jolted her from her reverie. He was coming around, his hand was moving to his throat, to the bandage there. She sprang from her chair and moved to the side of the bed, capturing the wandering hand in her own, the other hand moving to his face as he opened his eyes. Blinking rapidly, trying to focus, his eyes landed on her. She stroked his bearded cheek and said his name, softly but firmly. "Greg. Can you hear me?"

The word came in a rasp, uneven. "Cameron?" He croaked.

Relief flooded through her and she thought she might faint. "Yes" she nodded, removing her hand from his face. She poured him a glass of water and held it to his lips. He drank deeply and closed his eyes momentarily, taking stock of his situation.

His eyes snapped open again and they were clearer. "How bad is it?" He whispered.

"Pretty good actually. The surgeons repaired the damage to your abdomen, and your neck. You're going to be okay."

He nodded. "Ketamine?"

"You've been in a coma for two days. Can you tell? Is there any pain?"

He shook his head, wincing as the movement pulled on the sutures in his neck. "Too early to tell. I'm tired." His voice trailed off as his eyes closed again.

"It's okay. Get some sleep. You need it."

He nodded gently, pulling the covers up around his chin as he drifted off to sleep. She turned to go, she had to tell the others that he was out of the coma. One thing prevented her from leaving his side: he hadn't let go of her hand. She brought his hand to her lips and kissed the back of it, turned it over and kissed the palm. Lifting the covers, she placed it gently on his chest and tucked him in. Then she fled the room, racing down the hallway to the office.


End file.
